Platformization also continues in Germany. Amazon is leading the way, with 79 percent of German Internet users buying from the market leader. Dutch brands have now woken up to Amazon's growth figures. More and more companies are seeing the enormous potential the platform offers. As a brand, how do you ensure that you take control of this promising marketplace and that other resellers do not run off with the loot?
Protect your brand from copycats and price competition
If you have a successful product on the market, counterfeit products will appear in no time. These are often suppliers who want to profit from your success with cheaper versions of your successful product. The products have been produced under miserable conditions in the Far East without safety seals and take away your market share at rock bottom prices. Your own resellers can also cause problems for your brand through price competition, poor product information and mediocre reviews. Ultimately, there is only one way to optimize your brand's presence on Amazon: take matters into your own hands and build your brand yourself on Amazon.de. You can make the channel manageable by appointing a marketplace manager who makes sure that resellers stick to agreements made, your product information is up to date and abusive copycats are worked out of the market. A small war chest for legal action is then no luxury.
Leverage Amazon marketing tools for brand ownersÂ
Amazon has long understood that brands have budgets to spend. The company is cleverly capitalizing on this by offering you, the brand owner, a set of marketing tools to profile your brand on Amazon. To do this, you must first apply for Amazon Brand Registry and prove that you are a registered brand. The condition is that your brand is registered in Europe. After Amazon's approval, you can then enrich your products with A+ content, set up comparison tables with your products and launch your own Amazon Storefront. This is your own brand page on Amazon that you can structure with a menu and specific landing pages. You can provide your Storefront with inspiring content such as images and videos. A good example of a Dutch brand is FatBoy's Storefront, https://www.amazon.de/fatboy. An Amazon Storefront is the ideal place to showcase your top sellers and new products, with the look and feel of your brand. However, a Storefront on Amazon.de must be set up completely in German. It is also important here that the most important keywords are incorporated on the Storefront. Note! This has to convert well, so don't just let the first text broker translate it! And yes, even your English language video must be translated to German. It will not be accepted by Amazon otherwise. A voice over can help, German consumers are used to this. You will soon be able to use this video for video ads.
Take advantage of the low-hanging fruit
Now that you've given your brand a face on Amazon.de, it's time to take advantage of the low-hanging fruit. You make yourself findable on your own brand and product names, revenue with a good Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). You advertise at the top and the revenue that would otherwise have gone to your resellers now largely flows into your own coffers, to be used for the next step: taking advantage of Amazon's large reach. Do start small with, say, the 10 most important products. Then you can better ensure that your fulfillment is in place right away. The bar at Amazon is incredibly high in terms of delivery speed, product availability, content accuracy and after-sales. Nothing is more deadly than bad reviews and, in an extreme case, a blocked account as a result. You can outsource fulfillment to Amazon (Fulfillment by Amazon). Amazon ships the goods and is also responsible for after sales. This keeps you as the seller out of harm's way in case of any delivery problems or customer questions, and you can avoid receiving negative seller feedback.
Move higher in the marketing funnel
Ultimately, you want to build your brand for the longer term and take full advantage of the 44 million German Amazon customers. If there is a brand manager within your company, now is the time to tap into that. After all, Amazon doesn't have to serve only as a sales channel. You also want to appeal to people who do not yet know your brand and higher in the funnel, extra branding budget comes in handy, because you will advertise on broader relevant, read more expensive, keywords. Also, with some extra budget, you can land on competing product pages and entice consumers, through an ad, to switch to your product page. As a bonus, there is Amazon's extensive ad network that allows you to reach Amazon customers through other websites and apps as well; Amazon's Demand Side Platform (DSP). Based on ig data, Amazon knows exactly what its customers' buying intent is and you benefit from that. Higher in the funnel, the ROAS is lower, so set softer KPIs, such as reach and brand awareness.
Scaling up to other platforms
24 percent of German consumers like to buy directly from their favorite brand. If you play it right, so are you. Make sure you use the data you get from Amazon (feedback, keywords, runners) for your webshop and Google Shopping campaigns. In addition, you can increase your reach through other marketplaces such as eBay, Zalando (for fashion brands) and Real, for example. A well-optimized product feed laced with German keywords and well-converting content comes in handy there. Amsterdenim is a great example of a company that has quickly grown into an international player through brand building and sales on Zalando.de and Amazon.de. In Dexport's new online series "The Breakthrough," Ewout Key Rameijer, general manager of Amsterdenim talks about his approach to building a brand internationally.
